Audacious Compassion

Welcome to the Audacious Compassion podcast, where we discuss how to be more compassionate in everyday situations. If you have a question or prompt for an upcoming episode, please write us at us@avery-weir.net!

This is a combined October/November episode, with a transcription coming soon! Our prompt came from a friend of the show:

So yeah, like, I play a lot of video games, like you do, and I consider myself open-minded and respectful of other people while playing. I play with a lot of friends who sometimes use certain language that might offend someone of another ethnicity or gender. I try my best to let them know that this kind of behavior is not nice and might scare off anybody else (women/transgender/another race) away from playing video games. How can I deal with situations like this?

We talk about demonstrating active compassion in the face of systemic injustice.

Our prompt came from a friend of the show and was paraphrased from a verbal conversation:

I really like your show, but I have a hard time figuring out how to apply your ideas. I work in an industry where I see active misogyny all the time, but even being a small business owner, I don’t feel like I have any power to help the people around me. If I refuse to work with a supplier or bank because they treat women like shit, they won’t even notice. I’m not doing well enough to hire more than a temp employee, and I put my own livelihood at risk if I call people out. How do I keep from feeling powerless and how do I act compassionately instead of just feeling angry about what I see?